Venturing deeper into the caves we saw many stalactites and stalagmites and the amazing chamber called Aladdin’s cave which had a mirror pool which reminded us of a miniature village….
We were told that the cave system was about 1km long which took us 45minutes to walk through, whereas, it took Richard Gough 8 years to tunnel through to the furthest chamber!
For the fieldwork we had to climb up Jacob’s Ladder, 274 steps, which some of us found more challenging than others! At the top of the escarpment we looked at limestone pavements and the gorge and did a field sketch. Back at the bottom of the valley we then went to see another aspect of tourism for the village – sweet making. We were given a demonstration of how to make boiled sweets and the smell was simply gorgeous; we then spent some time in the shop trying out and buying the home-made sweets.
The last part of the trip was on an open top bus that drove up through the gorge where we spotted goats, birds of prey and some rock climbers. We were really lucky with the weather until the clouds gave way and the rain poured down on us but it was a lovely day and we would love to go again.